fuck yeah copyright law

bakerstreetbabes:

#FreeSherlock, Shreffgate, and The Babes in The New York Times today! Arts section, C1 and C6! Beautiful photo of Lyndsay included ;)

Read the article [HERE]

File under: cases we are paying close attention to because of their implications for everyone who creates works inspired by others. 

Plus, we’ve never had a Supreme Court case that tackles the underlying issue of copyrightability of a character, but who on the current Court can write something that would top Learned Hand in 1930: : 

If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare’s “ideas” in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein’s Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species. It follows that the less developed the characters, the less they can be copy- righted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.

It’s possible that the Holmes-is-public-domain case won’t get to the Supremes, but given the circumstances it’s more likely than most. It’s not the kind of case where a settlement would likely be offered by the Estate that’s suitable to the plaintiff. 

Things we didn’t expect to joyfully type (at least not this soon): 

Huzzah! Universal won its “50 Shades” copyright case against the porn company!

You know, the company (Smash) that claimed that 50 Shades was in the public domain because in a prior version, it had been uploaded to FFN and various other sites online. 

The one where Universal got to write, in its legal papers, this: 

Defendants do not and cannot provide any legal authority for the proposition that an earlier version of Ms. Mitchell’s work is now in the “public domain.” They can hardly defend their infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights in the Fifty Shades Trilogy by claiming that it is substantially similar to Ms. Mitchell’s own earlier work.

Yes, Universal & their lawyers have basically stated that there is no legal authority for the proposition that fanfic posted online is in the public domain. 

How is this relevant to your interests, fanfic writers, and fanartists? 

As we posted last week,  as a user of the internet, you still own the copyright in your work, even if it is posted online for other people to access, and even if the Terms of Use for the site you’re posting on say that the site has a license to use your work on specified ways.

This right exists, even if it’s based on something someone else wrote; you still hold a copyright in your original, specific words. Online and available does not equal Public Domain.

So here’s the breaking news about the law suit, via Lexis-Nexus:

Adult film studio Smash Pictures Inc. agreed Friday to pay an undisclosed amount and stop selling its pornographic adaptations of the best-selling “Fifty Shades” book series, settling a copyright infringement suit by Universal City Studios LLC and the books’ rights holder.

(Note: We don’t know who created the image at the top of this post; we did an Image Search and it came back to 9gag, who we know don’t create a lot of what they post and watermark; if you know who made it please let us know so we can properly credit.)

honestys-easy:

milenab:

unlockaflockofwords:

Yes, I know I reblogged it before; I’m reblogging it again.

This image epitomises the delight I get from transformative works, and it’s a beautifully eloquent response to Robin Hobb’s misguided rant about fanfiction:

“The intent of the author is ignored. A writer puts a great deal of thought into what goes into the story and what doesn’t. If a particular scene doesn’t happen ‘on stage’ before the reader’s eyes, there is probably a reason for it. If something is left nebulous, it is because the author intends for it to be nebulous. To use an analogy, we look at the Mona Lisa and wonder. Each of us draws his own conclusions about her elusive smile. We don’t draw eyebrows on her to make her look surprised, or put a balloon caption over her head. Yet much fan fiction does just that. Fan fiction closes up the space that I have engineered into the story, and the reader is told what he must think rather than being allowed to observe the characters and draw his own conclusions.”  Robin Hobb on fanfiction

http://web.archive.org/web/20050630015105/http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html

And she’s wrong, she’s SO wrong. Granted, drawing a mustache onto the Mona Lisa would be a bad thing, a final thing, a change-the-source thing, but there are COUNTLESS images that mess with the Mona Lisa without ever actually damaging the source image, without ever preventing a viewer from engaging with the pristine source image and interpreting it as they see fit. The Mona Lisa remains inviolate, regardless of weed-smoking iterations or The Da Vinci Code, and the audience are free to interpret her as they will. Transformative works based upon her are examples of people sharing one possible interpretation, or addressing problems they perceive, or bringing a marxist/feminist/whateverist reading to the fore, or just making their friends giggle.

This, though, this is so much better than anything I’ve seen that transforms the Mona Lisa. This takes that gorgeous, familiar image of Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring (an image that the book and movie of the same name have made familiar to people outwith Art History students [who might know it as the ‘Mona Lisa of the North’]) and reworks it with brilliant and elegant simplicity.

Manet’s painting ‘Olympia’ does something similar with Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ (which is itself a reworking of Giorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’); Georgione dresses up his objectifying & titillating high class porn as an image of a goddess, and has her eyes closed - she doesn’t know we’re ogling her. She’s helpless before our (male) voyeuristic gaze. Titian’s nude knows we’re ogling her, but she’s still putatively a goddess, and despite that she’s glancing coyly away as she consciously provokes the viewer, offering herself up to him. Manet’s nude, however, is unambiguously presented as a human and a prostitute, and she looks straight out at the viewer, her hand on her thigh making it clear that she alone chooses who gets access to her sex. The painting was received with shock and disgust and had to be protected from those who wanted to destroy it for its obscenity - not for showing naked flesh, but for making the naked woman into a subject, rather than an object.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_%28Manet%29

God, I’m rambling. Anyway, point being - transformative work, intratextual work, is most emphatically not a new thing, nor a creatively barren thing. It’s awesome. And this image here is delicious, because it takes that lovely painting, in which the model is mysterious, alluring, her parted lips gleaming and her eyes wide as she looks out at the viewer, objectified - and it drags it straight into the 21st century by adding the camera, making it into that recognisable MySpace pose, making her the CREATOR of the image not just the object. She is looking at herself, not at us, and this careful composition becomes an ephemeral snapshot, a fleeting moment in her day.

This.

Reblogging for all the commentary. There has been so much transformative work that has elevated the original, turned it on its head, made us all think, and yes, hangs in museums today. When the author of that quote thumbs her nose at fanfiction, she turns her head away from Warhol, from Ovid, from motherfucking Shakespeare.
These are the creators who have transformed their world and placed their own indelible marks on society as we know it, with their “fanworks”.

And the courts - at least here in the US where the European concept of moral rights isn’t codified or part of common law - have actually incorporated the fan-created, fan-supported arguments about transformative works into caselaw in the last few decades. 

It’s made it safer to be creative without worrying that The Powers That Be can take everything you own (they never could, but that’s almost besides the point).